Off the charts

Maps form an important part of displays in museums of all sizes, but often merely as backdrops. Others are rarely seen because they are too large or fragile. But working with designers and artists, museums and galleries are finding creative ways to foreground maps and tell their fascinating stories in the digital age.

For a start, maps are not always what they seem: they offer perspectives on the world that can be turned quite literally on their head. At Talking Maps (until 8 March), an exhibition at the Weston Library, part of the Bodleian Library in Oxford, a stunning silver disc that shows the world in the 12th century is entrancing visitors.

“As well as having Mecca at its centre, the Al-Idrisi map is also upside down, with the British Isles at the bottom, so you see people with their heads in strange positions,” says Nick Millea, the map librarian at the Bodleian and co-curator of Talking Maps.

While the original map is lost, the Bodleian worked with the heritage conservation firm Factum Arte to recreate it from the mapmaker’s drawings, engraving it onto the two-metre diameter disc using 3D digital restoration techniques.

The other artefacts in the exhibition, many of which are drawn from the Bodleian’s collection of 1.5m maps, include ancient, pre-modern and contemporary items from a range of cultures and formats. Highlights include the Gough Map, the earliest surviving map showing Great Britain in a recognisable form, the Selden Map, a late Ming dynasty map of the South China Sea, and fictional maps by authors CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.

“We have tried to select maps that will challenge visitors’ perceptions and get them talking, hence the title,” says Millea, pointing to Stephen Walter’s Brexitland map. “This uses acrylics overpainted on a map of Britain, but with the remain areas under water. The Bodleian is a living library and it’s great to add a map with such contemporary relevance to our collections.”

The subversive qualities of maps can be seen at the House of Illustration in London, where the maps, charts and infographics produced by the African-American sociologist WEB Du Bois are on view together for the first time in the UK. These were made for the 1900 Paris Exposition, which celebrated the grand projects of colonial nations.

“People are used to data visualisation, but aren’t always aware of how it’s been used in the past,” says Katie McCurrach, the co-curator of WEB Du Bois: Charting Black Lives.

“Du Bois redeployed the methods of imperial maps that showed ownership and categorisation. He demonstrated his radical ideas with subtle subversions of cartographic norms, for example, by using red, black and green, which became the colours of the Pan-African Movement. Du Bois believed statistics could challenge the racist views of the time and show how black people were flourishing in business, literary publishing and other professions.”

But maps are a snapshot in time: they both reveal and hide, and alongside Du Bois’ work there are new versions by the data artist Mona Chalabi that show how that apparent progress still needs to be discussed.

Linking past and present

Using contemporary art as a response to historic maps can make collections more accessible to visitors. At Scarborough Art Gallery, a 200-year-old map that was the first to show Britain’s geological strata is on display.

The hand-painted watercolour map was published in 1815 by William Smith, one of the founders of modern geology who lived in Scarborough for 10 years and set up the town’s Rotunda Museum, one of the first purpose-built museums in the world. The map can be seen with a contemporary map-inspired painting by the artist Kathy Prendergast.

“An old map may not be high up on a teenager’s tick-list, but seeing how a renowned artist explores ideas of space, colour and mapping in an art context gives it a synergy,” says the curator Simon Hedges.

“Both are beautiful, painstakingly hand-painted watercolours, but where one is fixed in time and place, the other takes this as its departure point. Smith used colour to indicate rock strata and coal seams – and the colours are as fresh and vivid as the day it was painted; Prendergast takes it in a more subjective direction, imbuing the process with thought and ideas. Yet there is a powerful connection between them.”

Digital technology has enabled local history museums to signpost their rich sources of archival material that otherwise might not be seen. Saddleworth Museum worked with Headland Design to include a touchscreen with an 1895 map in its new galleries.

“The museum has a good collection of photographs and postcards, and the interactive gives access to these,” says Ruth McKew, a director at Headland Design.

The map can be overlaid with a Google map so visitors can compare today with the past. This works particularly well because Saddleworth is an area of several villages and hamlets, and not a specific place.”

Wardown House, Museum & Gallery in Luton found a fun way to highlight its local industry-based collections, which include hats, headgear and Bedfordshire lace.

“Wardown House is a Victorian mansion and we wanted an accessible way for people to find out about the town’s history without the need for a lot of interpretation text in the rooms,” says Elise Naish, the head of heritage and collections at Luton Culture.

In the billiards room, a 1915 map of the town is set into a billiards table, where visitors can play digital billiards either as just a game or with access to content in return for successful “potting”.

“The third option takes you to the map, where streets and places associated with our collections bring up images of objects, photographs and other archival material,” says Naish, adding that the map has the same intuitive pinch and zoom technology as a mobile phone. “Luton has a diverse ethnic mix and a lot of languages are spoken here, so enabling people to navigate visually without having to read a lot of instructions was important. It’s proving really popular.”

Families enjoy playing the billiards, and an unexpected outcome was that an elderly group with dementia loved the map. “One member had mastered the pinch and zoom mechanism immediately and was explaining it to the others,” says Naish.

Elsewhere in the museum, an 1842 map of Luton has been printed on to a rug in the library. “Designers can help you think about your content differently, and this is one of many inexpensive but engaging ways of getting information out,” Naish says.

Digital enhancement

“Maps are endlessly fascinating and beautiful objects, but are not always accessible to visitors, or able to be viewed or handled,” says designer Chris Parker, the director of Wide-Sky Design, which worked with Wardown House.

“Adding further dimensions with digital technologies, for example, on touch-tables as at Wardown, means discovery and exploration can be greatly enhanced. They can be scanned at a high resolution and digitised on such a large scale that people can explore the pigment, the ink, the marks of the mapmaker – details that no one has noticed before.”

Large-scale renditions of historic landscapes are also achievable with digital technology. In the North York Moors National Park, remnants of brick and iron structures can puzzle visitors. These are relics of the old ironstone mining industry, which the Land of Iron project explores in its investigation of life on the North York Moors during the “iron rush”.

“To help visitors envisage the industry and orientate themselves we will be placing 700mm x 700mm cast-metal 3D maps on to the landscape,” says Adam Knowles, the interpretation and education coordinator at museum and visitor experience design company Creative Core.

The project, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, uses LiDAR – 3D laser technology – to set maps into oak tables on the old rail tracks. Combined with data from historic maps, these reimagine the Victorian mines, rail systems, blast furnaces and kilns.

“There are also traditional trail maps and panels, but the 3D maps take it to a different level by reimposing structure into the now-peaceful landscape,” says Knowles.

The Ordnance Survey (OS) has created an online gallery of its maps and is also working with artists and arts organisations such as A Space Arts in Southampton.

A Space Arts has refurbished God’s House Tower on the city’s waterfront (see review), and the OS has created a map showing where the water once reached. God’s House Tower was also, coincidentally, once the home of the OS archaeology unit. Digital technology has changed the face of mapping, and museums and heritage sites are benefiting from this as they try to engage tech-savvy visitors.

Deborah Mulhearn is a freelance journalist